Are Cheap Power Tool Batteries Safe to Use? Teardown Test!【Just Buy official Battery】

[@ChiefBridgeFuser]

Excellent teardown! This is a window into what it takes to design a lithium battery pack!

[@68HC060]

I'm refurbishing batteries for living. I've seen - probably the exact same battery you've shown - a customer bought it on aliexpress. The nickel inside was burned (so the connection was open) - one can say "fortunately". It acted like a fuse in this case. The cells were probably 1.5Ah, and the battery said 4.0Ah. Personally I like Makita very much, but they do not allow us to refurbish their batteries, which means we tell people not to purchase Makita. That's a shame, because their products are of good quality. From 2025, Makita will have to allow us to refurbish their batteries (which is a good thing, especially for the environment, but also for their reputation) - if they refuse, they can't sell their battery-powered tools in Europe.

[@binxyde]

Nice Video! Opened up a cheap Makita rebuild from a friend because it stopped working. Was the same shit like the first one with the small pcb. Except the main power cables were soldered. One solder joint got loose through heat i guess. And because of the missing full BMS i told him to put this garbage where it belongs. He had bought 6 of them 😱

[@badeadrian]

Next time tell your friend to bring you the original battery... only replace the cells with the new ones...or to buy some original used ones if he doesn't keep the old ones....

[@repsych]

Thanks! I once shone a light; it was different to shining a light.

[@Traper_T]

Good video, some times it's hard to understand designers of products takin in to a coun that for 2$ you can buy 5S BMS with balancing function so zaving this couple cents on producents side don't make any sense

[@daijoubu4529]

Those 5S BMS doesn't actually work that well either 😂

[@Traper_T]

@@daijoubu4529 It's better than nothing

[@greebo7857]

Thank you. I have never bought a knock off battery pack. Now I never will, tempting though they might be.

[@badeadrian]

That's why I only buy the batteries and I do spot welded back in the original box with the original BMS... But not too many people know how to do it and maybe they are not interested in changing the batteries and they buy fake replacements...

[@mekkertroniker2002]

I take cells from trash, often bms are not working, so its free. Buy complete akku and Take only cells, lol

[@jimsvideos7201]

Thank you for the video, and thank you for the translation too.

[@mickwolf1077]

they are time bombs just waiting to burn when the cells get unbalanced. the only good use for these packs is dismantling and using the 'cells' in your own projects

[@arnoekarts7114]

Sincerely Good Luck

[@sairus6055]

What about DIY kits are boards on them any good?

[@kevinegal8586]

Wow that's really bad. Btw: the Makita battery and charger probably also do balancing of the cells right? Which would be impossible with the fake ones...

[@68HC060]

One hint: If a battery says (18V) 7Ah or more, you know it's fake. Expensive high current cells go up to 3Ah. You may be able to find some that go even higher, but not much, and you can't get those cells for $2 or less. So a new battery that cost less than $20, claiming it's 7Ah is simply a fake battery.

[@daijoubu4529]

Imo if they sell Rigid or Ryobi (or other name brand battery with built-in BMS, excluding Dewalt) I would use that with an adapter, just stick to the original chargers however.

[@roman_abelardo]

Excelente aporte 👍🏻

[@leucome]

The after market packs I got had a BMS chip and all the balancing wire. I would think that safe knock off battery are also common.

[@holycrapski]

You used a Quality brand for your comparison. Most cheaper brands are the same bad design as the knockoff battery's that failed and even worse.

[@suryaprihadi2258]

Thank u

[@leebaer1920]

Nice work. I was considering buying these exact Chinese knockoff's.... until now. The other thing this means is as the battery pairs drift in voltage, some up and some down, they will arrive at a point much sooner where they whole pack will stop working. Much sooner than if it had a proper BMS that monitored and charged each parallel segment individually.

[@moinshaikh2265]

I have seen so many Tasla electric car exploding due to battery 🔋 they have more higher safety standards,then why its happen, what you will say about it..?

[@daijoubu4529]

Tesla makes innovative products but they lack experience, it is possible it's just poorly engineered. Eg early tesla had raw aluminum parts bolted to steel, HELLO GALVANIC corrosion

[@KuntalGhosh]

8:59 that board seem to have an smd temparature sensor. I hope thats a real sensor and not a regular 10k resistor to fool the ic😂

[@HwSystems]

Dewalt compatible are less dangerous because the "Management" is done by the charger and the tools, but the cells are still unmatched crap. I used them for years, it got out of balance because of this and I must manually balance them every year to have full capacity. It is not something I recommend. The charger can't balance cells that are so unmatched.

[@daijoubu4529]

Add balance leads and use a hobby charger, or buy an adapter and use a battery with a BMS from another brand 🤣

[@Guishan_Lingyou]

I bought "compatible" batteries by accident. They were sold on walmart's website and listed as Makita batteries. They even look a lot like Makita batteries but they don't even fit on my Makita chargers. Also, they are supposed to be 6 amp hours but are not bigger than real Makita 4 amp hour batteries. .

[@robertwilliams8450]

How to tell apart real battery from fake without dissassembly?

[@TranTek]

cheaper one use poor quality cells the 2nd uses molicell original 4Ah uses Samsung 20R

[@mean78mashine]

respekt

[@CL-yp1bs]

Looking up the model# of those cells they are cheap no name cells. 2000mah.. so two in parallel would be 4ah - the pack says "6Ah" so yeah... scammy stuff. @ 6:10

[@michaelfairchild]

I only buy legit Makita batteries for both LXT and XGT platform, same with powertools and chargers. In case of my flat burning down due to it, I know where their HQ is in my country, so I would go visit them 😅 Joke aside, you should also note a real Makita LXT batteries will have two different weight to them. That said, buy your tools from official reseller in your country.

[@Thirrtyeighterr]

2:29 what’s tracking?

[@1st_ProCactus]

Good video, and that was pretty cool at the end. Comment for the sake of a comment

[@TheyAreEatingTheCats]

You can't use the genuine battery because you disassembled it? Come on, don't be that ridiculous. You clearly know what you are doing when handling these batteries. Your target audience rolls their eyes at you when you say something like that. You don't need to go overboard on safety like that. You lose some respect from people when you choose to say ridiculous things like that. Otherwise, I love your channel, I just found it about 30 minutes ago and I feel like I might end up binge watching your videos

[@infopackrat]

I bet they didn't save very much by not copying the original exactly

[@piconano]

The Japanese never buy junk. One will go bankrupt trying to sell junk in Japan. You have very sensible rules and regulations in place to protect your citizens. I only buy electrical equipment by a brand name I can sue if sht hits the fan and burns my house down.

[@dlggamer7014]

The only thing unsafe about compatible batteries is the BMS, if u replace it with the original it works the same

[@daijoubu4529]

Assuming they are using legitimate high powered cells, not recycled or rewrapped cells.

[@68HC060]

Problem is: If your original Makita battery has failed charging 3 times in the charger, the charger will write in the battery's BMS, that it cannot be used. -So always use a non-Makita charger for charging your Makita batteries, if you wish to re-use the original BMS...

[@hotnikq]

no load balance not even with Zener diode 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@sgath92]

What's sad about these cheap knock offs is that they could have quite easily duplicated all of the safety features of the brand-name product and still cut a nice profit. Sure, they would have had to raise the price some. But not to where they cost 90-dollars like the brand name one costs. I find it hard to believe that a resin coating, temp sensor, and 4-wire monitoring configuration costs $60 when manufactured on a large scale. I feel as thought any competent DIYer could replicate the brand name to almost identical specifications, for less than $90. Resin is cheap enough. Temp sensors are cheap enough. A 3d printer can make a battery holder & impact absorber. But the consumer is left having to choose between low cost dangerous products that don't work well, or over priced brandname ones that just cost too much.

[@ai4352]

Hey these batteries are bad bc they have no balancer modules that balance the batteries in series

[@glowytheglowbug]

stupid why the manufacturers dont just make it a perfect 4S bms with a dollar more

[@68HC060]

That battery is a 5S (18V). 4S would give you only about 14.4V. Edit: But the chinese will save 0.001 cent wherever they can. It doesn't matter if the customer dies, as long as they get the profit.

[@glowytheglowbug]

@@68HC060 oop meant 5s bms, didnt look properly haha, I mean for my own powerbank that I made myself, it cost about $1-2 for a ready made bms with cables attached to it, if they can source batteries for cheap, maybe make a case where you can replace the internal 18650s it might be worth getting too

[@mortenwinslw2785]

Big problem is that you can also buy fake batteries and they looks like the real deal.

[@bcgelandewagen]

common wisdom of buying non-oem batteries - penny wise, pound foolish.

[@josephsaucedo8691]

The crap board what was in the 1gen original makita battery when first offered then they changed it mostly because of that but it's the only one offered to repair or replace none have low voltage pertection that work good most of the time that what goes wrong or bad even in a factory battery if changer see it as bad 3 time the board won't function any more on a original. For 50$ more each battery suck that low voltage discharge kills them all original or not. Original even worse because board also no good and a proper replacement aren't available 1 battery more then the tool or even priced.🤑💯✌️

[@jusb1066]

Domo arigato

[@fvrrljr]

*Don't Throw Them Away, discharge them cut the wire that allows charging Use As Display of your work, of course this video shows your work*

[@JustAnotherAlchemist]

Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree that cheep Chinese knockoff battery packs are always a questionable gamble. However, this video smells of corporate sponsored consumer propaganda. Specifically, I feel like the samples shown were cherry picked, and/or the balance wires were purposefully removed. It really tries to sell the image that generic/compatibles are always positioned to catch fire, and branded batteries are not.... ... In reality though. All secondary cells have a non-zero chance to catch fire. Don't believe me? *Ready your instructions.* Even the name-brand manufactures warn you to protect yourself from potential fire caused by their own batteries. Basically, one should never charge any battery in a way that a fire could potentially spread out of control. This is not an off-brand vs. name-brand problem, it's a problem with energy storage in general. Don't let them fool you, many a battery fire has been caused by proper brand batteries. In any case, my no-name Amazon Makita compatible battery pack functions perfectly. Point of fact, the only problem I ever have with it is my branded charger complains that it's bad. No doubt the charger detects that it's non-genuine and decides to be passive-aggressive about that. For good measure, I took the cover off it and it was similar to the first generic shown here. The only difference was it has several colored wires going to each connection between the cells and the PCB. TL;DR: Not all generics are missing safety features. I have pictures, but ... why take my word? Take yours apart instead and see for yourself. It's not hard... Four ~T10 torx screws.

[@greebo7857]

You got any evidence for your assertions? You're right, I don't believe you. Make a YT vid to counter this one. IOW, put up or shut up. Or are you an Amazon shill? Louis Rossman exposes very, very many Amazon scams. Obviously not all stuff on Amazon is poor qual, but since the "pandemic" saw Amazon sales take off there are heaps of crap products on there, and Amazon does not listen. The recent spate of terrible "accidents" with auto cleaning cat litter devices proves this, and Amazon take down the bad reviews, not the products. I would, however, like to see a comparison of the actual cells in these packs. Tipping they're not as good also. TorqueTestChannel do some comparisons of the amp hour assertions.

[@DENKI-OTAKU]

Who will compensate you if your house catches fire and burn down due to a cheap battery malfunction? At the very least, the company selling the cheap batteries won't compensate you. Buying a brand-name product means you are buying peace of mind and safety.

[@JustAnotherAlchemist]

​@@DENKI-OTAKU I'm sorry, but I am unaware of a single major manufacture that has a warranty that covers a house fire. A consumer would have to open a lawsuit and prove it was the product's fault, and not their own. That would be a huge and difficult fight.

[@daijoubu4529]

​@@JustAnotherAlchemistname brand will at least cover their ass by designing and putting safety in place. Those generic packs only have a tailgate warranty. Just because you've never had an accident in a car, it doesn't mean your airbaga and seatbelts are useless, a car without either can still drive perfectly fine, but your survival isn't guaranteed in case of a collision 😂

[@68HC060]

I live in Europe and I can tell you the Chinese knock-off batteries come with only a single balance-wire. We've seen so many of those at work.